Video of the session 2 follows.
The committee for Energy and Climate Change must be in line for an award. Its performance this week was exceptional.
The mental level of Yeo’s committee is – well, the climate debate is so rancorous let’s try for decorum.
Suffice it to say that John Robertson’s questioning would have been a credit to a clever dugong. Albert Owen nearly grasped the idea that that a Greenpeace activist in charge of an IPCC Chapter might lack objectivity. And Tim Yeo’s chairing was as good as a golf club captain in a Saturday night lock-in.
The committee had just received three mainstream climate workers and now, to say they had looked at all sides, they had three sceptics.
No doubt their sceptical remarks are contentious, their facts arguable and their conclusions unusual – but the three of them certainly gave the lie to the claim that “the science is settled”.
Richard Lindzen, a professor at MIT, in his low-key, diffident manner, looked placidly into the committee’s apocalyptic future. How that annoyed them.
The Chairman asked a number of leading. loaded or frankly loopy questions .
Such as:
“So, you think the report should be compiled on a more slipshod basis?”
And:
“Are you saying the Government is deliberately appointing scientists who aren’t as good as others?”
And, here’s an exchange worth quoting at length.
Yeo pressed Lindzen to get a Yes to the question, “Was 2000 to 2010 the hottest decade on record?”
Lindzen: (Eventually) Of course it was.
Yeo: It’s interesting you’re using that as evidence that somehow global warming has stopped. That we’ve just gone through the hottest decade of all time (sic) and that this is actually evidence that global warming is not taking place.
Lindzen: You’re saying something that doesn’t make sense.
Yeo: Oh, so it is continuing!
Lindzen: How shall I put it? On a certain smoothing level you can say it’s continuing. It hasn’t done anything for 15 years.
Yeo: Except we’ve just had the hottest-ever (sic) decade . . . If I was clocked driving my car at 90 mph, faster than I’d ever driven it before, I don’t find that convincing evidence I haven’t broken the 70mph speed limit.
It dawns on Lindzen the chairman has special needs. He explains how a 16-year smoothing average means one thing, how a pause and plateau means another.
Yeo responds: Just because we’ve had the hottest decade on record doesn’t seem conclusive proof that global warming has come to an end.
After a chorus of contradiction:
Yeo: I thought Professor Lindzen was saying the upward trend has come to an end.
Lindzen: (quite sharply, for him) No! I never said it’s come to an end! I said for 16 years it hasn’t increased!
Yeo: I don’t think we’ll get much further on this. I’m happy to be judged by what’s on the record.
I bet he won’t be.
Read more here: SKETCH: Unsettling the “Settled Science” of Climate Change
Now compare that with what the execrable Bob Ward ( who’s paid by “Big Climate” to have an opinion, unlike Donna Laframboise who paid her own way there, and asked for help from the skeptic community to defray travel costs) had to say about it:
For example, Donna Laframboise, the world’s leading producer of conspiracy theories about the IPCC, was asked by Mr Stringer why she thought the organisation should be abolished. Her reply was extremely misleading: “When the IAC [InterAcademy Council] reported in 2010 it said that there were significant shortcomings in every major step of the IPCC process. That is not a mild criticism. That suggests that there are serious reasons to be very careful about the conclusions of the IPCC process.”
Conspiracy theories? He must be talking to Cook and Lew. Ward’s rant, complete with all the denigrating labels necessary for his craft, is here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Media/Commentary/2014/Jan/Blog-on-Select-Committee-Hearing.aspx
You can watch the session here, thanks to reader “Jabba the Cat”:
Steve from Rockwood says: @ur momisugly January 30, 2014 at 1:45 pm
3. Lazy sun leads to less ozone?
4. What is a lazy sun? Less radiation , less solar magnetic activity, both?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
NASA: Solar Variability, Ozone, and Climate
NASA: Ozone Production and Destruction
NASA on the Sun:
2008 NASA: Solar Wind Loses Power, Hits 50-year Low
NASA: EVE: Measuring the Sun’s Hidden Variability
NASA: Quiet Sun Means Cooling of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
2008 NASA: Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field Discovered
NASA on Ozone
NASA: Ozone
NASA: UV and Ozone
NASA: A violent Sun Affects the Earth’s Ozone
Well you did ask. :>)
Cosmic rays depends on the magnetic field of the Earth.
http://www.geo-orbit.org/sizeimgs/magcolorr.gif
t would seem that Tim (Trougher) Yeo is not going to be the Parliamentary representative of the constituency that he represents,but in which he chooses not to live, for very much longer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-25808012
We could save a lot of bandwidth puzzling over party labels if citizens on both sides of the pond were willing to listen to George Washington:
“There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the Administration of the Government and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true–and in Governments of a Monarchical cast Patriotism may look with endulgence, if not with favour, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate & assuage it. A fire not to be quenched; it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.
Classic zinger by Lindzen,
Lindzen: …science is an interest in its own right. If you are going to go down that path, you have to take account of the fact that scientists have their own interests…science, particularly climate science, is virtually a governmental monopoly.
Politician: …why then are all these national governments going down the road they are going on then?…if you are right we paying for a lot on things we shouldn’t be paying out on…
Lindzen: …all I’m saying is…there would be no disagreement here that whatever the UK is deciding to do vis-à-vis climate…there will be no impact on your climate. I think you’ll all agree that it will have a profound impact on your economy…so you are making the decision to take a problem, which might not be a problem…take actions which you know will create problems, and feel on the net you’ve done the right thing. That’s for you to decide.
An attempt has been made to make sure that neither of the main parties differ in energy and socialized medicine in many countries. But this is not cohering, and challenges are once again coming from conservatives.
For example:
1. Australia has elected a new government with the mandate to repeal the carbon tax.
2. The US has still a small majority in the house which has attempted to repeal Obamacare and exempt America over 30 times. These representatives include Sen Inhoffe and others who have made passage of green nonsense so difficult that the carbon tax has been put off until now.
3. In GB, the UKIP opposes worthless wind turbines, grandiose public transportation projects; supports leaving the EU and educational choice; and opposes unlimited immigration mandated by the EU.
In Canada:
Conservative Party launches radio ad on Thomas Mulcair’s Carbon Tax
November 07, 2012
In a fragile global economy, we know that Canada’s Economic Action Plan is the right plan to create and protect jobs, increase the growth potential of the Canadian economy, and ensure the long-term prosperity of Canadians.
Thomas Mulcair’s NDP wants to bring in a carbon tax that will not only take $20 billion out of the pockets of Canadians by raising the price of everything, it will also cripple Canadian businesses and kill Canadian jobs.
And experts say the NDP’s carbon tax will raise the price of gas by 10 cents a litre.
We can’t afford Mulcair’s NDP.
So it is important to ensure Canadians understand the threat posed by Mulcair’s risky and dangerous economic plan.
That is why the Conservative Party of Canada is launching a radio ad informing Canadians we cannot afford Thomas Mulcair’s NDP that will weaken our economy and our country.
Picture of Tim’s trough from 2012.
I watched the whole thing live on my Mac, here in the UK. The warmists came over mainly as specious and the skeptics mainly as honest and straightforward. Prof. Linden was heroic – the one trick he missed was to demonstrate more forcibly that even if AR5 was completely correct, it would not amount a hill of climate change beans. Otherwise, pretty good.
By the way, I agree with other commentators here that the voting public in the UK would have no idea that this hearing had taken place. Despite the science and the fantastic work done by Anthony and the mods, it is the MEDIA where this battle will be fought and won.
So dear WUWTers, please keep on keeping on.
dbstealey says:
January 30, 2014 at 11:26 am
JimS says:
“…the record goes back to only 130 years.”
Actually, the record goes back much farther. There are numerous ice core records from both hemispheres, which go back hundreds of thousands of years.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Past_740_kyrs_Dome-Concordia_ice_core_temperature_reconstructions.png
Is the “NOW” on that graph 2013 or 1950 or 1860?
@Gail Combs. You’re the best !
Dang, now I’m going to have to read and think (instead of just reading).
Hearings like this one should have been held ten years ago and repeated annually, in every country’s parliament. Why weren’t they? Because the politicians were snowed.
rogerknights says: @ur momisugly January 30, 2014 at 3:51 pm
Hearings like this one should have been held ten years ago and repeated annually, in every country’s parliament. Why weren’t they?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Because the globalists had hoped to get a global tax put into place before the weather cycles turned cold. That was what Copenhagen was all about.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan ” “strongly supports finding new sources of funding” Politician speak for taxes.
You can see the globalists dancing around the issue HERE
From an older source that talks of New York City, 2000: The United Nations Millennium Summit, Sept 6-9
dbstealey,
I spent a break today and plotted the GISP2 data in excel to check your claim about how fast the temperature has warmed. In the GISP2 graph the largest warming happened during the younger dryas from 11,857 years before present (1950) and 11,258 before present. in this largest jump the temperature record went up by 12.84 degrees over the course of 599 years or an average rise of 2.14 degrees per century.
Since the younger Dryas the temperature fluctuations have been much more steady (during the Holocene) The next largest rise occurred just after the younger dryas increase, from 8,190 before present to 7,817 before present. the temperature went up by 3.54 degrees over the course of 373 years, or an average rise of .949 degrees per century.
The third warming period I studied happened when the northern hemisphere was going into the medieval warming period. this happened beginning in 1,206 before present (again present is 1950 here) and ended in 999 before present (in the year 949 AD) The temperature went up 1.51 degrees over the course of 208 years, or an average rise of .728 degrees per century.
The reason that this is significant is because the Greenland temperature change that you show is about 3 times the global average. so, when the younger dryas went up by 12.84 degrees, the global average temperature went up by a little over 4 degrees.
As the months and years roll on by, stating that the 2000’s was the hottest decade will lose its effectiveness.
Gail Combs:
I completely agree with your argument in your post at January 30, 2014 at 4:14 pm.
Before Copenhagen the AGW-scare was on a roll. But following that failure the scare was sure to fade away. The HoC DECC Select Committee Hearing asking for AGW-sceptic witnesses is an example of slow withdrawal from the scare as a result of the failure at Copenhagen.
And the ‘pause’ provides politicians with justification to slowly move away from the scare. The Hearing is a sign of politicians starting to place on record reasons for reducing their responses to the scare: i.e. we must continue to take action but we now know we have more time because we are getting evidence it is not as urgent as we thought. Input from sceptics is needed for those reasons to be entered into Hansard.
Please note that the pro-AGW Session had three scientists as Witnesses. Donna L. is a journalist who was invited to be a Witness in the anti-AGW Session, and her inclusion ensures that doubts about the IPCC will now be recorded in Hansard.
The eventual HoC DECC Select Committee Report promises to be interesting as does the response to it from HM Government.
Richard
Obviously the Alarmists do not understand the idea of a plateau. Global Surface temps plateaued 15-18 years ago. Ergo, the last 10 years could be the warmest and there could be no warming since 1996. Is that difficult to understand? Can the guy read a graph?
Correction: “These representatives include all of the Republicans in the House [not Inhofe, he is in the Senate] in 2012 who have made passage of green nonsense so difficult that the carbon tax has been put off until now.”
If you catch your own mistake, it never happened!
10% of the Carbon Tax in Oz is being transferred to the UN Climate Fund according to JoNova. Therefore, carbon tax = tribute payments to the World Empire (“UN”), as Gail is also documenting.
richardscourtney,
Please do not ever stop posting here.
So, is Yeo an idiot, or does he just play one on TV?
If a car goes 0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds and then it takes 10 minutes to go from 60 to 61 mph you could say “OMG we are going the fastest we ever have, the car is going to break apart at any moment if we keep going at this rate in another 10 minutes 4 seconds we will be going 122 mph. But that isn’t very honest. In that scenario there wouldn’t be much to worry about as the speed appears to have leveled often. And in 10 minutes it is more likey to go from 61 to 62 than it is to go from 61 to 122.
Hopefully that made some sense.
A short segment with Prof. Lindzen (patiently) explaining things to Yeo: http://youtu.be/HUT7hLtFXIk
@richardscourtney –
The connection may be different in the UK, but there is a definite ideological link between AGW and socialism in the US. AGW is a key part of the US left’s justification for excessive taxation and regulation. It is seen here, inter alia, as a rationale for wealth redistribution, both within the US and between the US and third world countries.
I believe the link between AGW and socialism is inevitable because both call for increased taxation and more direct control over people’s daily lives. Socialism says, we know better what is good for you than you do, and AGW is one of those things that is better for you. And since AGW argues against cheap energy, it argues against capitalism which is dependent on cheap energy for maximum output and efficiency.
Perhaps, if the real value and potential of capitalism and personal liberty were felt in the UK to the same degree and extent as they always have been here in the USA, the connection between AGW and anti-capitalist ideas like socialism would be more readily apparent to folks in the UK.
As for Tim Yeo, I suspect he is rather more like some of our crony capitalists here in the US – der Fuehrer’s billionaire buddies – focused on making money off the scam that is AGW rather than on any ideological considerations. That doesn’t mean they aren’t socialist in their actions. There is plenty of history to demonstrate how socialist systems actually work to concentrate wealth in fewer hands – because power is concentrated in fewer hands and because of elite self-justification, which is essential to socialist thinking.
Let us think, if cosmic radiation affects the state of the clouds in the troposphere, the more influence the state of the ozone in the stratosphere.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=13&startmonth=01&startyear=2014&starttime=00%3A00&endday=31&endmonth=01&endyear=2014&endtime=00%3A00&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on
Richard Lindzen expressed a number of points particularly neatly. Read his way of expressing them far better than I summarise them here.
1. Trenberth’s missing heat going into the oceans, if it happens, puts it in the category of natural variation and requires GHG influence to be lowered to reach the observed total.
2. Aerosols. If their cooling effect is now estimated as lower than thought, this leads logically to a need to lower climate sensitivity, making GHG less important than before. (Nic Lewis also made this point clearly).
3. Action to combat climate change. The ‘do nothing’ option leads to an outcome that is in the non-harmful range of climate model consequences. The ‘do something’ option is ‘feel good’ but it carries a harsh economic penalty, but in either case no action by Great Britain has any significant effect on the global climate.
Donna was strong on the point that NGO activists are not wise choices for lead IPCC authors. (The Brits have a history such as spy rings of allowing people with strange, known backgrounds into positions of influence).
The political response still remains NOT to understand the issues, but to align oneself to a group or hypothesis and vote by appeal to authority. This is understandable for busy non-expert people, but it is not optimum. Graham Stringer knows this problem. Tim Yeo avoids it by closing his eyes to it.
…………..
Sure, the evidence is lengthy, but it well worth the listen and study because some complex issues have been distilled into neat, useable expressions.
To put this into its political context – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10485742/Tim-Yeo-dropped-as-Tory-MP-by-local-party.html